the tea bag is where i left it on the kitchen counter, a depressed transplant heart
leaking brown bile, still a
pillow for a child's head

and
not to seem rude--
but may i ask why you are allowed to be so happy?

what makes you so free and easy, so many exclamation points in even your most
thoughtless welcomes, as if your heart weighed no more than the feather
tattooed on my back

when even my heart weighs tons, heavy pewter in comparison to that falling feather?

why are you so free: when did he not do something similar to you?
and to that part of you that is no longer virginity but is neither reputation, that part
that can be taken and not returned but cannot fully vanish without your permission

although permission is eagerly sought and even for the most fragile of us
the ones hidden behind thoroughly obscuring mantillas, not just my scrap of veil
that became too easy to displace all too soon

we sometimes grant it so easily
doors after all being much easier to unlock than they are to lock
and lock-and-key being such a loved and petted notion to
us all

i wish i could make off with your joy and swallow it
until it was absorbed by my blue blood and became mine
heat and life!
some semblance of pink would perhaps return to my cheeks

finally to resemble a Klimt girl
as i always wished i could
as i've always secretly believed i do

but without the telling gush of
the phosphorescent stream of life fluid

that gives them that liquored glow,
their liquor being the only real kind
what i take to be liquor is really just
tomorrow's sickness and sorrow

replaced instead by exhausted tea bag,
still a pillow for a child's head

every morning i wake as if i were just born
and my chest aches with all the sadness of
everything i have yet to be left by
have yet to pay for
have yet to lose
and have already lost

every morning i wake the patient lying on the operating table:

force myself out of bed
seek my own ether
and tranquilize myself

relying crippled on that exhausted tea bag
a bowl or two of pot so that my head feels less like
it has been paved to the ground

morning, noon, and night my friends
and sometimes more
but try not to judge:

there is no ward for those of us who
cant remember happiness

no transfusion and i so wish i could have a transfusion--

heat and life!
finally to resemble a Klimt girl

i think that the truth is that my sadness is
the sort of thing that cannot be watched

no one wishes to be infected by this particularly debilitating blue and i harbor no blame

adjust your mantillas
enjoy your warm red blood and
sometime soon i hope
more than i hope for anything else

that i will be able to wake on mornings
with lightness again

no longer reliant on exhausted tea bag to soothe this
prevalent pain in my chest that shocks me
with its strength every time

and someday maybe to walk without
a train of thick smoke

held off the ground by the attendant incense and match fumes

i have no alibi:
caught pale handed in the bedroom
with the pipe
trying to steal your liveliness

only some you know, i would not take your entire store:

it is a terrible thing to do,
i wouldnt do it

morphine may

morphine May, you came like a lover from the ether
of everything i had yet to come to know

but once introduced i found you irresistible
a hot and sweating fever high and a delirious joy

in bed i would lay and sweat out my weight
until i was only one body made only of one thing and that thing

was all the elation for
life friends love the cosmos music mystery and the human heart
that had been gathered by my own hands as time
inconspicuously passed

and how when the day was warm and life was simple i
could morphine the hours away

i remember much
but little
i remember time falling like feathers


all around in a beautiful universe
as little as my bedroom and as big as

the constantly pulsing undercurrent of love
that i'm so tentative but faithful exists

now let me lay beneath that heavy air again
that air heavy with a sweet and reliable promise

dont worry darling you'll be alright
dont worry darling
see how right it already is?

christmas takes the prize
i hate it most

serves only as a twisted reminder
of how happy we all used to be

i feel as if i'm the only one who cant hold up

climb into the bathtub
get out of the bathtub

every morning feel again the expanding pain in my chest
measure the severity

have a long stoned talk with myself:
you need perspective
etc etc etc
always darkest before the dawn
etc etc etc
where's your faith in goodness?
etc etc etc

cry a very long time
put the kettle on
these are my mornings

stumble impaired through my days
and find that i hate
mostly everyone and mostly
everything

until it is cold and dark
another of a ceaseless chain of nights
i crawl into my constricting pain

and the christmas lights blink on the tree
on
off
on off

i sedate myself with smoke
a friendly nurse
here, this and then you'll feel much better

til i come down and feel much worse
and the christmas lights blink on the tree
on
off
on off

hit or miss

the days are hit
or miss

sometimes i approach lightness
sometimes I'm cripplingly blue

but when i am low
it feels like a
pain to blanket the senses

a pain that mothers all pain
my chest frozen in a knot
of pure crystalline sadness

i don't know how i stand the sadness
and why it attacks me so
cruel and strong

i start thinking i'm totally fucked

other times i feel i understand
i have lucid moments of peace
they touch me kind
with cool fingers

so i can carry on

lately i have been

i think,

too absorbent of the universe's

absurd, unknowable

mystery.

there's but one cure for such a sickness and that's--

well perhaps there are two,

and those are:

pot of course, its sympathetic, numbing fog,

and

syd barrett secondly,

a kindred spirit for the most self-hating,

those confounded by life,

casualties of the swift hand of reality,

it's knock-down force--

and the cruel pain of love,

a knock-down lonely purgatory in which i rest

well, toss and turn

a sort of vacuum that beats, a prolific pain

it keeps mothering itself anew

these, the things nearest to me lately

musty incense, a glass of port
and an eighth an ounce of pot

hannah and i sit on the carpet
and roll joints all evening long

playing with my cat and talking
about lovers

we're both fresh out
and thank god for that

i have my picture of brian jones
and am more involved
in a sort of lazy shrine-worship

than anything else

my hometown is beginning to feel
like a hometown

where you grow up but not where you live

a teabag run out and dry
or some fruit barren of seeds

time i think
to seek new stomping grounds

it's december, brian jones


my favorite Stone is brian jones
king of the soft-handed gypsies
a diadem
of cold white stars and electric buzz

the winter has come and brought the cold
incense rolls round my bedroom
the light leaves hastily
with the tired setting sun

december is fat this year,
brian jones!
with song, with friends and with wine
the maryjane endless, the
loneliness sweet

no old lovers make me crazy
no old memories daze my head

there is a blanket warm and yellow
and there are candles on the nightstand

and brian jones' quick flash of
crazy heat

like a forgotten pot boiling over
in a moment extreme
hot water rolling down onto the
stove top

an astronomical body
exploding in space

I always think that it will be the last time i write a poem about you
or write a song about you
or write a foolish letter to you

but it never has been so far and maybe it never will

I've been debilitated by memories of first love
they make my life now seem so tuneless
and so loveless

when once I knew how all of it felt -
love, being loved, misery
joy

now i only know that you do not respond
to my letters
too tired of hurting too long

maybe your life really has moved on, as mine should and as it must

but i am still my foolish self
my heart unable to leave the image of
the christmas cactus